The Clearing with Katherine May

Welcome to the Wintering Sessions with Katherine May. This week Katherine chats to Tanya Shadrick, author of 'The Cure For Sleep'. A few days after giving birth, Tanya found herself in an ambulance, barely clinging to life. But surviving that terrifying experience changed everything. In this conversation, Tanya talks about how facing death made her bolder, more certain of her ambitions, and more d...

Welcome to the Wintering Sessions with Katherine May. This week Katherine chats to Zeba Talkhani, author of 'My Past Is A Foreign Country'. Growing up as an Indian Muslim in socially-repressive Saudi Arabia, Zeba Talkhani learned her feminism young, unable to stop questioning the restrictions on her thoughts and personal freedoms. But after writing a memoir of her experiences, she encountered a ba...

Welcome to the Wintering Sessions with Katherine May. This week Katherine chats to Sara Ryan, author of 'Justice For Laughing Boy'. After Sara Ryan's autistic son, Connor, was sectioned and admitted to a residental mental health unit, there seemed to be no way to get him out again. And then, one morning, he died after having an epileptic seizure in the bath. Convinced that negligence was to blame,...

Welcome to the Wintering Sessions with Katherine May. This week Katherine chats to Marlee Grace, author of 'Getting To Center'. In this frank and wide-ranging conversation, Marlee Grace talks about the process of finding a life that makes you happy. Drawing on her book 'Getting to Center', she talks about finding love, living with addiction and the ongoing quest to find balance in life that's led...

Welcome to the Wintering Sessions with Katherine May. This week Katherine chats to Nicola Slawson, journalist and founder of 'The Single Supplement'. Through her newsletter The Single Supplement, Nicola Slawson has become the poster girl for a happy life lived alone. But much of her success lies in her ability to write honestly and with balance about the single life - and here she talks about a pe...

Welcome to the Wintering Sessions with Katherine May. This week Katherine chats to Michele Harper, author of 'The Beauty In Breaking'. Michele Harper's career as a physician is a true vocation - the result, she says, of a childhood spent with an abusive father. In this conversation, she and Katherine talk about the nature of her calling to help, and her experience of racism in the workplace, where...

Welcome to the Wintering Sessions with Katherine May. This week Katherine chats to Kerri Ni Dochartaigh, author of 'Thin Places'. Kerri talks in detail about the aftermath of growing up in Derry at the height of the Troubles, as the daughter of a Protestant father and a Catholic mother. Forced to come to terms with trauma and survivorship guilt, Kerri found healing in the dark magic of the Irish l...

In this episode, I speak to poet, novelist and broadcaster Sophia Blackwell about the time when a relationship brutally ended, leaving her flailing around to find a sense of home. Sophia discusses the experience of relationships when you've known you were gay since childhood, and shares the romantic story of meeting her wife. You can find Sophia on Twitter: @sophiablackwell Her website - including...

In this final episode of Season One, I speak to journalist and broadcaster Remona Aly about her life-changing decision to call off an engagement, and how it echoed through the years to teach her about forgiveness, faith and empathy. This is such a special one for me - I went to school with Remona, and I think you can hear our joy at reconnecting after a couple of decades, and feeling so at home in...

Author Raynor Winn talks to Katherine May about the losing her home when her husband was diagnosed with a terminal illess, and finding new life from having nothing Raynor Winn has captured a multitude of hearts with her book, The Salt Path, which recounts the time she lost her home just as her husband received a terminal diagnosis. With nothing to lose, they set off to walk the South West Coast Pa...

Author Huma Qureshi talks to Katherine May about a wintering period during her third pregnancy When Huma got pregnant for the third time, she expected to flourish: after all, she already had a successful journalism career and was working on her first novel. But extreme sickness floored her, and took her into a dark mental space in which she felt that she might never recover. In her wise and wonder...

Jini Reddy, author of Wanderland, talks to Katherine May about a dark season in her life. When Jini's father died suddenly, she was still trying to work out what to do with her life. In this moving conversation, she talks about the times when she felt lost and unsure what to do next. But in time, she came to make her career as a writer. I loved talking to Jini - she's a true citizen of the world w...

In this thoughful and incredibly honest converation, journalist Rebecca Armstrong talks to Katherine May about a huge change that she undertook at the end of last year - giving up drinking alcohol. Rebecca discusses her life before she stopped drinking, the process of making the decision to go sober, and her life since. She's warm, frank and funny, offering an account of alcoholism in which there'...

In this week's episode, Katherine May talks to Catherine Cho, author of Inferno, a beautifully told account of postpartum psychosis. After the birth of her son Cato, Catherine travelled to the USA, where her mental health declined to the point that she was committed to a secure ward. Her book details the time in which she recovered her sense of self and her bond with her baby, while trying to unde...

This week, I talk to Leah Hazard, NHS midwife extraorinaire and author of Hard Pushed, part memoir of Leah's life on the labour ward, and part exploration of the current state of the profession. Leah is as funny, wise and warm in person as she is in print, and she talks about the life-changing decision to leave her TV career and train to be a midwife, and the moment when the stress became too much...

In this episode, Katherine May talks to Penny Wincer - photographer, activist and author of Tender: The Imperfect Art of Caring - about the wintering seasons in her life. Penny discusses her time as a young carer for her mother, who suffered from depression and anxiety, and her current role as carer for her autistic son, Arthur. While she never stops advocating for the needs of carers, Penny also...

Coming soon: The Wintering Sessions, based on Katherine May's book of the same name. Each episode will feature a conversation with a writer or performer, talking about the times they've fallen through the cracks, felt left out, isolated, rejected or humiliated. Hit subscribe to make sure you catch Episode 1! This is a podcast of real conversations about the tough times in life: no platitudes, and...